Daniel Tong gave good accounts of the meditation on Dowland's In Darknesse
Let Mee Dwell by Thomas Ades (now famously enriched in USA, a
PLG Young Musician in 1993)) and David Matthews' Piano Sonata (1989),
written for William Howard with that pianist's Schubert playing in mind.
Clear and spare in texture, constructed with fifteen short, interlinked sections,
this was a welcome reminder of a fine work of ten years ago.

The Chinook Clarinet Quartet made a good case for a medium that can
sound harsh without careful tone control. Eddie McGuire's Celtic
Knotwork (his alter ego is Scottish traditional flutist in The
Whistlebinkies) is built from unison beginnings to a 'cascading dialogue
of dancing phrases'. Thoroughly enjoyable, and particularly welcome after
the disappointment of his accordion concerto at Huddersfield. It was well
contrasted with an original and individual work by Edwin Roxburgh,
Heliochrome (1989),which was uncommonly successful in translating
a visual experience into sound. Its inspiration was the play of light from
stained glass windows at Liverpool, with 'a purple beam like a laser, surrounded
by an ocean of coloured haze'. Roxburgh used extended techniques, with a
preponderance of high harmonics as a halo within which melody emerged. The
quartet managed it extremely well, without the difference tones becoming
oppressive. A very successful South Bank appearance.

Petros Moschos and Dimitris Karydis had disappointed expectations of their
two-piano recital by substituting for the programmed Zimmermann a dull and
derivative piece by a Montenegro-born composer, Zarko Mirkovic. They took
no account of the Purcell Room's size and the reflectivity of its walls in
their attack upon Theodore Antoniou's Concerto for two pianos. This
work by a hitherto unknown 'prominent Greek composer' was overlong and
under-inventive, raising concern about the health of the contemporary music
scene in their country since Skalkottas?

The Ovid Ensemble (oboe, string trio and piano) has a good, varied
repertoire to tap for groupings within this combination. With careful preparation
and good listeners to each other, with awareness of the hall's acoustic,
they brought also programming skills to ensure a good, cohesive hour of music
making. Their sensitivity was especially welcome after the relentless onslaught
by the two Greek pianists earlier in the evening.

The Chaconne (1989) for piano quartet by Colin Matthews was for me
the best example of this featured composer's music heard during the week.
It claims to solve the 'problematic balance issue' by restricting the pianist
to his left hand, and set the tone for transparency and clarity which was
a touchstone of this group's playing. (If they admit a clarinettist or second
violinist friend as an extra player in an extended Ovid, one of Franz
Schmidt's magnificent piano (left-hand only) quintets would go well with
this Matthews piece).

Robert Keeley's Dances with Bears, to 'an imaginary ursine choreography'
were 'light hearted and light textured'. They would bring a smile to audiences
anywhere, and the composer, taking his bow, looked suitably like a friendly
Teddy! John Woolrich's Box of Phantoms were typically spare
miniatures, with embedded tiny quotations from Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart.
Kate Romano's Masque II (1999), composed for this occasion,
was based upon Renaissance procedures, and brought the Ovid Ensemble's
set to a rousing conclusion with a Gavotte, Pavane and a final
Branles which mixed its ideas in independent tempi.

The PLG week was brought to a music-theatrical finish by Ilana Jacobs,
who emerged from total darkness in a sequence of costume changes. Convincingly
over the top as Alison Bauld's Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, she became
an infuriating modern chatterer with mobile phone in two of Georges
Aperghis's Recitations. For James Clarke's Disembodied
Poetics she conducted a sexy and apparently fraught love affair with
her impressive head of red hair, but her final nod towards the BBC's Weill
weekend at the Barbican, Surabaya Johnny and Alabama Song, was
underpowered and anticlimactic.

Peter Grahame Woolf

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